Just thought I'd start a thread for this trail 'system' we have near where I live. Between some who are now STR members that already knew of and ride here and others I've recently shown around, this will be a good spot to check in. The conditions seem to constantly evolve, so we can keep up on current events. Today, we entered the area via a different route than we usually do. We went up Lake Hughes Road (from the interesection of Lake Hughes Rd. and Parker Rd.) for a couple miles to where a fire road climb begins on the south side of the road just before a small water tank. About 4/10ths of a mile (and a fairly steep climb) up there is a "y" intersection where you make a very sharp right turn and a short distance later, veer to the left onto a double track that appears to be 'not heavily used'. From this point until you drop all the way to the floor of Charlie Canyon (at about the 4.5 mile mark from the street intersection of Lake Hughes Rd. and Parker Rd.), it's fairly easy to stay on course. This is a fun, mostly singletrack descent. The most difficult part being the last 100 feet as it hits the canyon floor: The trail heads back toward the mouth of the canyon for a short distance before you can cross the creek (dry) channel and then make a left to head back further into the canyon. The fire road gently rolls up and down for about a mile and a half on the canyon floor crossing the creek bed several times. At about 6 miles, there is a fire road you can turn right on to begin the climb out of Charlie Canyon and head up to Tapia Canyon. This climb is about a half mile long and always requires me to be sweating buckets while in my 'granny/granny' combo. This means Tinker could big ring it while holding a pleasant converstaion. Once at the meadow, our group searched feverishly for a forked stick to use to poke my lungs back into my chest cavity. The smart ones strap the stick to their Camelbak for later use. While we were 'admiring the view' we saw a dust cloud making it's way up the fire road we usually climb. It turned out to be the bee keeper that recently placed several hives further up our normal fire road climb. He was kind enough to stop and chat with us for a short while and answer all of our stupid bee questions and informed us the bees will only be there for another month or so. Here, he makes his way up out of the meadow toward the hives: The bees are most bothersome during the heat of the day, so when we ride during those periods, we have been using another trail to get up to the top of 'the climb'. Turns out that this trail is a ton of fun, but has a few challenging climbs to make you earn your fun. It also has plenty of other fun to make it very much worth it. Here is the last short sprint climb before you hang a left and finish climbing along the ridge: Once to the top of the climb \\/ the only thing left to do was to pick which way we wanted to descend. Today it would be Burn Victim. This was a treat to ride ride our usual area in a new way. Almost made it like riding new dirt. At any rate, the route we took was in pretty good shape. The road in Charlie Canyon has some sandy spots, but nothing that would make me want not want to ride it. Other than that everything was in pretty good shape with the creek bed section being the icing on the cake of this local fun zone. http://trail.motionbased.com/trail/activity/5859471
